


pteros

by sapphicstanzas



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Contemporary Setting, Greek Mythology AU, M/M, Wings AU, eros and psyche retelling, makkachin is also present, this is self indulgent i love the eros and psyche story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16066961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicstanzas/pseuds/sapphicstanzas
Summary: [Chorus]: Socrates mentioned it once. The necessity for wings.(a modern eros and psyche story feat. a stray poodle and a small feather collection)





	pteros

_ desire entails a wing-growing necessity _

_ : _

There was a Greek chorus in his head.

It never shut up and--as Greek choruses were wont to do--entertained itself mainly with crying out his worst misfortunes at thematically important, realistically inconvenient points in his life. Often it was indistinguishable from his main consciousness, but sometimes it was not. These occasions were usually those in which it spoke Ancient Greek (which, idiosyncratically or not, was not the first language of Katsuki Yuuri).

Today, the chorus said,  _ You forgot milk. _

“I forgot milk.” He set the grocery bags on the counter and did not turn to acknowledge the entrance of Phichit Chulanont, heralded by a soft rustling and the gentle tapping of fingers on the table. “Sorry. I’ll get a carton tomorrow.”

“Got a call while you were gone.” The tapping continued. Yuuri turned to look. “I took the message.”

“And?”

Phichit was dressed for work. There was a thin red line slashed horizontal across his cheek--a fletching wound. He looked tired, but not sickly, which probably meant he had not poisoned himself on the clock today. Good news abound.

“And?” Phichit drawled. The incessant tapping stopped. “I didn’t take the assignment, because I am busy. And it’s your job.”

“I don’t  _ expect _ you to take them for me--”

“The address is on the calendar.” Phichit waved a dismissive hand. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“Would you like me to look at your cheek first?” Yuuri offered quietly, but by then Phichit was already gone.

:

This was the third black feather he had found on his windowsill in as many days. Viktor Nikiforov was not a superstitious person--or at the very least, he labored constantly not to appear so--but surely this meant something. (Things which came in threes usually did.)

Greenwich Village did have at least a meager population of crows, and of ravens, but Viktor had never encountered either species of bird nesting near his apartment windowsill. And the feathers were rather  _ large  _ for any of the crows he knew, even in New York.

Viktor went to the window and pulled up the sash. Gently, so as not to push the newest feather off the sill and into the street several stories below, he retrieved it and quietly held it before his face.

Really, there was nothing special about it other than its size. It was a deep black, deep enough that there was a sort of iridescent blue sheen to it when held to the light. It was a flight feather like all the rest--Viktor had looked such things up, and drawn preliminary conclusions that his apartment complex had a resident moulting crow, seeing as it was nearing October now. Still, he imagined he would have seen a creature of such substantial size by now.

Viktor set the feather on the table beside the sofa, next to the rest which had been discovered outside his window. He had begun a charming little collection of them recently.

He would not admit it, but he had become a bit taken in by the mystery of it. And he imagined the crow must have been a bit taken by the mystery of Viktor Nikiforov too, if it was now making a habit of leaving its flight feathers on his sill during the daylight hours.

Either that, or he was being cursed. He wasn’t sure what black birds meant other than that they were harbingers of misfortune, but even harbingers of misfortune were more likely to bring some excitement into his life than his current arrangement. 

(Lately, he had begun to think that he would welcome anything which was not the empty chill of his single apartment. Even a silent friendship with some monstrous crow.)

:

“You look miserable.” Phichit was seated at the table, making his way through a bowl of dry cereal in a manner meant to communicate the long-suffering nature of the act. Yuuri had forgotten to buy milk each afternoon for the past three days, and it was not like Phichit to let him go without guilt for it. “Are you okay?”

[Chorus]:  _ Obsessed with a mortal man, how adorable, the stuff of stories-- _

“M’fine.”

[Chorus] _ : Do you think you are the hero in a story, Katsuki Yuuri? Do you think this makes you sympathetic to anyone but an antiquated audience? _

Yuuri rubbed at his eyes. “M’just tired. Haven’t really gotten any sleep.”

“It’s the new assignment,” Phichit said, and it was not a question. Yuuri did not answer.

[Chorus]:  _ Not even heroes get stories anymore. Not in this age. _

It was evening. The nights were getting cooler now, and the sprawling trees in Greenwich had begun to tremble with the knowledge of an approaching winter-long sleep. Yuuri’s bones ached. His head ached. The something which lived beneath his ribs also ached.

Suddenly, Yuuri could not stand it. He was up from the table suddenly, hands shaking, and he said, “I’m going to finish it tonight.”

“Are you?” Phichit looked up with some measure of concern. “I don’t think that’s wise. You look like you’re going to collapse.”

“I’m not going to collapse.” He lifted his chin to prove this point, then felt his head spin. “I’m fine.”

“Very convincing.” Phichit turned back to his cereal. “At least take your phone this time. You never remember.”

“On it.” Yuuri aimed for cheerful acquiescence. Phichit’s raised eyebrows communicated his dubiousness.

“Come home tonight,” he said in final parting, as Yuuri yanked the door open with more desperate force than necessary. “Don’t make me go looking for you.”

:

He did, in fact, make Phichit go looking for him.

Upon alighting on the fire escape directly above the apartment in question, Yuuri shook his head. Midnight’s wings folded neatly against his shoulder blades, and he was visible to the mortal eye again.

[Chorus]:  _ Visible is a dangerous thing to be. _

He knew, from studying the habits of Yuuri’s latest assignment for the past seventy-two hours, that he would spend his evening largely at the window. This was convenient for Yuuri, if it did strike him as a bit sad within the context of the assignment’s humanity. Mortals were sociable creatures--if Yuuri had learned anything in his twenty-four years, it was this--and if this one had a friend outside of the hired cleaning woman, Yuuri had yet to become even superficially acquainted with them.

[Chorus]:  _ Is that the root of this fascination? It is because he is lonely? _

Stupid. Maudlin. This was his job, not charity work. If certain sentimental gods wished for certain beautiful mortals to be happy (even semi-falsely, as was Yuuri’s work), who was he to poison it with a personal connection? The wills and whims of gods were not his own, were never his own, and he had no right to equate his own desires with that of the divine.

[Chorus]:  _ Well. _

[Chorus]:  _ Whatever your fatal flaw, Katsuki Yuuri, one might never accuse you of hubris. _

From the fire escape, he had a difficult but not impossible angle from which to hit him. And Phichit had always maintained, since they were children, that Yuuri was a wicked good shot.

But his head hurt. His heart hurt. When the familiar sound of the window sash being thrown upward came from below, the also-familiar tapping of contemplative fingers against stone, Yuuri unfurled his wings softly and crouched on the thin edge of the fire escape railing. Retrieved his bow from his back, selected from a light quiver an arrow whose point he tested lightly on a fingertip. Did not break the skin. Nocked the arrow, drew back the bowstring, took aim. From this angle, accommodating the way at which the target had his forearms pressed to the windowsill and his chin rested atop them, the arrow would find a home at the base of his neck, right above the collar of his soft, expensive sweater.

But Yuuri’s head hurt, and his heart hurt, and for a split second (enough for doubt, a split second was always enough time for doubt) Yuuri imagined a flaw in the make of the arrow. Something in the shaft was warped, so minisculely that it was not visible even to his sharply-trained eye, and yet it was evident that if he let it loose that the arrow would not fly true. Yuuri guided the bowstring back, removed the arrow, and laid the length of it across his knee. Pinned it there with his forearm, slung the bow against his back. Took the arrow shaft between his fingers and brought it up closer to his face to study. 

No flaw. Of course. He worried too much.

Still. Yuuri removed from his pocket a small knife, used it to strip a few barbs from one fletching on the far side of the arrow. Decided he was satisfied and returned the knife, again retrieved the bow, nocked the arrow, and drew the bowstring back to his cheek. 

The movement of his shoulders rustled the raven’s wings curved softly around the rest of him.

[Chorus]:  _ Socrates mentioned it once. The necessity for wings. _

:

From just above his window--as if someone had extended a hand from a sill attached to the apartment above him and let the thing drop from poetically indifferent fingers--a black feather slipped downward among miniscule air currents. It moved softly, barely, as if caught in slowed time. 

Caught in that same slowed time, Viktor Nikiforov looked up.

:

Yuuri knew he would fall before he did so, and he knew he would pierce himself on the arrow before he did so, and he knew in his effort to maintain his hold on the bow and prevent the arrow from flying (keep hold of the string, release the tension in the shoulders, you are falling you are falling but save the arrow it is divine) as he tilted that he would wrap his fingers around the barbed edge of the tip, slicing open his hand, before he did so. This foresight did nothing to aid him in the prevention of such occurrences.

[Chorus]:  _ Fuck. _

Instinct snapped Yuuri’s wings open to their full diameter around him, kept him from crushing every one of his hollow bones against the metal of the fire escape railing. However this same instinct--paralyzed totally by shock, by fear, by failure--did not remind him how to use them once he was airborne.

Falling was terrible. But Yuuri had fallen before. The wound to his hand was worse.

The gifts of blind terror and rage bestowed by the Furies were nothing compared to the potency of venom in a single one of the golden arrows which Yuuri carried with him. He had never experienced their effects before.

Icy fire erupted in his veins, poison travelling fastest in a creature which was molded by godly hands to heal at five times the speed of a mortal. He was a being engulfed in flames. How was it fair that mortals experienced pleasure at the tips of these arrows, when all creatures like Yuuri and Phichit would feel was this consumptive, maddening fire? Or was this what mortals called pleasure after all? 

[Chorus]:  _ How the hell do they stomach the burning? _

He was tumbling headfirst off the railing, but slowly, because he was in agony as he did it. Want for survival kicked in six feet down from the fire escape, and Yuuri pulled his wings to him quickly and then reopened them, managing to right himself momentarily in the empty air. His eyes seized on the mortal man’s face as he did so, and the venom in him sang. Yuuri thought,  _ Oh. _

The man’s face was still tilted upward to watch the descent of a single one of Yuuri’s flight feathers. He did not see Yuuri fall at ten times the speed (the earth wanted for bodies much more urgently than it craved feathers), though he did feel the stir of air against his face and wrote it off as a strange breeze.

In the same moment, Yuuri’s injured hand lashed forward to touch him. It was a foolish waste of the precious time he had to spare between the open air and the gravel four stories below, and proved itself fruitless. The man did not even glance in his direction, and his expression remained the same gentle frown with which Yuuri had come to be very familiar in the past four days.

He thought again, softly, as he plummeted.  _ Oh. _

:

Yuuri woke feverish. Phichit was there.

“Moron,” he said, placing a hand over Yuuri’s forehead with little gentleness. “You made me go looking for you.”

Sudden memory of the events of the evening. Yuuri gasped. “Did I break them?”

His wings. That’s what he had meant. Phichit knew it.

“No.” A sound as if he had tried to laugh, but could not because of the gravity of it all. “Do you think you would feel this great if you had broken them?”

Yuuri mumbled, “But I don’t feel great.”

“And that’s your own fault.” Yuuri flinched as Phichit lifted his hand from the bed. There was a new bandage wrapped around it. “What the fuck is this?”

“Uh--”

“I’ve been making phone calls all night, to all over--do you speak Greek? Like, actual modern Greek? Because I do not, and every single helpline in the goddamn world for this kind of thing is apparently sourced out of Lesbos--”

“You are making my head spin.” Head spins soon brought on a much more uncomfortable nausea. Yuuri had to close his eyes.

[Chorus]:  _ At least the fire has subsided. _

And indeed, the burning had died to a dull roar in his ears, a crackling in his chest. It was not comfortable, but it was a significant improvement from the previous situation. 

For reasons unknown, he could not keep himself from thinking of the color blue.

[Chorus]:  _ Never been lovesick before, Katsuki Yuuri? It’s a horrible thing to be. _

Yuuri was discovering that. Rather quickly.

:

The fifth feather was not black. 

It was a coppery brown, and it was already on the dining room table when Viktor came home. It was the first thing he saw.

The second thing he saw was the open window, and he was stepping backwards silently, reaching behind him for the door handle, clutching his keys tight in his fist so they did not chime loosely against one another--

“For god’s sake.” Someone pulled out a chair at his dining room table. One of two. The stranger sat in it. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong.”

“Why are you in my apartment?”

Raised eyebrows. He had dark hair, bright eyes. His fingers moved contemplatively against the tabletop. “Interesting. Where’s that accent from?”

Viktor made an incredulous gesture. The stranger shrugged.

“I’m in your apartment, and I know nothing about you. Except what I’ve learned from going through your personal shit--of which there isn’t much, so--”

“Who are you?”

The stranger shrugged again. “Nobody you’d know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Neither was yours.” He folded his hands beneath his chin. “Where’s the accent from?”

Viktor scowled. He said, “Russia.”

“Ah.” A smile. An indulgent survey in the tilt of his head. “Yuuri always does get the pretty ones.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

The smiled dropped. The stranger’s gaze became suddenly still.  He said, “I realize breaking into homes to deliver divine mandates isn’t really how things are done anymore, but I’ve been on the phone with minor gods overseas for twelve hours now and I’m  _ really _ tired, so--”

“Oh my god.” Viktor stepped backwards.

“And now I sound like a fucking lunatic, so that’s awesome--” He sighed. Dropped his head into his hands. He was still sitting alone at Viktor’s dining room table, and he looked suddenly small. “Listen. Please. Can you--just give me like two minutes.”

Viktor leaned against the door. He kept his grip on the handle, just in case, but he said, “I’m listening.”

:

_ My friend is sick.  _ That’s what he’d said.  _ He could be dying, I don’t actually know because nobody will give me a  _ fucking  _ straight answer, and I can’t exactly take him to the doctor on account of--well, on account of a lot.  _

_ But listen. I need your help.  _

Viktor reckoned when he had told himself that he would welcome any new circumstances which were not the hollowness of his apartment, fate must have taken such a whim as an invitation and run with it.

“Do you have, like, Uber?” The stranger (“You can call me Phichit, if it’ll make you trust me more”) turned to him. “On your phone? Or like, Lyft, or something--see, I would, but I don’t really have much use for them and now I’m seeing the circumstances in which they would be really convenient--”

“We’ll just hail a cab,” Viktor muttered, and then he stepped into the street.

The cab ride was long, and awkward. Viktor spoke little. Phichit spoke plenty. Perhaps it was a nervous tic. Though he didn’t look very presently nervous; with each passing minute, Viktor became more convinced that this was simply how he was.

Again, he questioned the merits of getting into a cab with a stranger who had broken into his apartment, and those of following him home. This was a dangerous new game.

“He’s not going to like that I brought you.” Phichit was looking at him. “He’s probably going to hate it, to be honest. Let me handle it, okay?”

“Okay,” Viktor mumbled, because he really had no alternative to the matter.

:

“You fucking did  _ what?”  _ Yuuri sat up. It caused him pain to do so, and he again closed his eyes against the impending nausea. Still, his jaw was tight. He whispered, “I am going to kill you.”

“You won’t.” Phichit’s hands on his shoulders, easing him back into bed. “You couldn’t if you tried.”

“Watch me,” Yuuri hissed, but his head was spinning and it was rather hard to be angry at so many things at once when he hurt this much. He settled for a mild glare. “I can’t believe you.”

Phichit’s touch disappeared from his shoulders, and Yuuri watched his hands flit uncomfortably about his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t want him here either--”

“He’s  _ here? Now?”  _ Sitting up again. Phichit kept him down with the heel of one hand against his chest. (Yuuri, admittedly, was lacking in most of his usual strength.) “What the  _ fuck _ , Phichit, you’re going to get me  _ fired--” _

“This is a bit more important!” In his rashness, Phichit’s voice had risen above the harsh whispers they had previously been using to fight. Phichit placed one hand against his own face. “I’m sorry. But--you are more important.”

[Chorus]:  _ More important than divine will? Doubtful. _

Sobering, this. But Yuuri knew such an argument would mean nothing to Phichit, who thought about the goodwill of his friends, then himself, and then what was expected of him by higher ups. In that order. 

Quietly, Yuuri said, “Thank you.” He sighed. “But I don’t see how he is going to help.”

“Everyone on the phone said it was our best bet. I’m not sure how either, but it’s the most we can do until I can actually get a call out to Italy--by this point I’m fairly convinced he’s just seeing it’s me in his contacts and declining the calls, which is  _ really  _ unhelpful--”

“Phichit.”

“I’m sorry, I just--”

“It’s fine.” Yuuri scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s fine.”

“You need to get some sleep.” Phichit stepped away from the bed. “I’ll go--I’ll talk to him.”

“Phichit,” Yuuri said again. Phichit looked to him. “He can’t know me. I can’t afford--”

“I’m sure they’ll understand--”

“You know damn well they won’t.” The burn in his lungs had begun again. “And I can’t afford that.”

“Okay.” Phichit sighed. “Yeah. I understand.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri murmured, and then there was the soft click of the closing bedroom door. Evening darkness.

:

“Don’t touch that.” 

Phichit had appeared in the kitchen again. His sudden materialization made Viktor start.

“I--” He withdrew his hand in his honest surprise, and then indignation at being told what to do made him put it back. “Why not?”

“Because it’s mine,” Phichit said, snatching the quiver off the counter. “And because you really, really don’t want to to touch it.”

“Why do you even have something like that? In Harlem?” Viktor knew he should probably have been more wary of a man who made an apparent hobby of bowhunting in the city. But he had fallen short in his stores of both incredulity and wariness by now.

Phichit looked at him and blinked. Like he thought Viktor stupid. “Sport.”

“That absolutely sounds like something a serial murderer would say,” Viktor protested, and it made Phichit laugh.

“You don’t look particularly frightened by it.”

Curious. He didn’t feel frightened either. “I don’t think I am.”

“Hm.” Phichit tilted his head to the side, bemused. “Why is that?”

_ I don’t know  _ didn’t strike him as a compelling explanation. Viktor settled for something prouder.

I guess you’re not very imposing.”

Another laugh. Phichit said, “I’m not offended by that.”

“Why not?” Damn. Was he just dead set on pushing it? Perhaps this was why he had no real friends in the city. Perhaps this was why he was going to die before thirty, most likely at the hands of a stranger six inches shorter than him.

“I don’t think you would be smart enough to be afraid of me, even if I was  _ imposing. _ ” He borrowed the word, and made it sound mocking. He tilted up his chin. “And you following me here already proves you don’t have very much to lose, doesn’t it?”

“I--” Well. He had nothing to argue against that. Viktor shrugged.

Phichit hummed. He hefted the quiver in his hands. “You know, if you didn’t have one of these with your name on it, I might have found you very interesting.”

“Should I be--flattered?” Viktor asked. The stranger cut him a winning smile.

“Relieved.”

:

He gave him a room with a lock on the inside for the night, which was more comforting than it likely should have been, since Viktor reckoned Phichit and his mysterious roommate possessed a ring of keys to unlock every room. Still. Viktor almost slept through the night. He was woken only by sound in the hallway, around three in the morning, which prompted him out of bed and to the door.

Movement, in the darkness. Viktor stood just shy of the doorway and asked, “Would you like help?”

“No.” The first word he said to him. For some reason, Viktor filed this away in his memory. “M’fine.”

“You don’t seem like you should be up and about.” He checked the time again on his phone. “Especially not this late. Alone.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Does he know you’re up? I could go get him--”

“Don’t.” Too fast. Viktor heard him gasp softly, like the command had caused him pain. “He only just went to sleep. And I’m fine.”

Persistence. Viktor was full of it. “Well, I could at least turn on a light.”

_ “No.”  _ Something like the snap of fabric, the rustling of reeds. Viktor blinked, and found no shape nor shadow before him in the hallway any longer. “Trust me. I’m fine.”

Viktor leaned against the doorframe. He had slept better here in a stranger’s home than he had in weeks alone in his own apartment. And a good night’s sleep had always made him talkative.

“Then while you’re here, can I ask who you are?”

A hiss, like he’d cut himself. Then: “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I can’t--my job doesn’t allow for that.”

Serene nod. Why was he so calm about this? Why was he so comfortable in what was very clearly a dangerous situation? He had slept better tonight than he could remember having done since moving to the city.

“Do you--”  _ Kill people? For a living?  _ He could hardly ask that, especially if it was true. But it seemed the most logical answer. “What is your job?”

A laugh. His voice was a soft thing. He sounded like someone who spoke gently, when he had to speak at all. But there was a spike of pain beneath that softness, and Viktor remembered:  _ My friend is sick. He could he dying. _

Viktor wondered if the aforementioned friend knew it. That he could be dying. 

He certainly didn’t talk like it.

“It’s not what you think,” he said quietly. “My job.”

Viktor smiled. Crossed his arms. “And what is it that I think?”

“I don’t hurt people, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” Hesitation. “At least, not on purpose. Not physically.”

“Your roommate--”

“Whatever Phichit has said, forget it.” He sounded as if he sighed. “He’s just fucking around. He’s got a lot on his shoulders right now.”

“Hm.” He liked the way he said  _ fuck.  _ He wondered if he could get him to say it again. “Can I at least get a name? A face?”

“Mine?” A sound like a step backwards. Viktor wondered where his silhouette had gone, in the dark. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“I understand.” He didn’t. Why did he say he had? Why did he tilt his head against the doorframe and clasp his hands like he didn’t know what to do with them? “How long will you be sick?”

The ensuing silence made it evident that Viktor was being studied. He tilted his chin and attempted a handsome silhouette.

“Do you have friends in the neighborhood?” The question was probably not intended to threaten. Still, it reminded Viktor of the reality of the situation. He was in a stranger’s home. He did not know what he looked like.

“Will it give me more leverage here to say I do?”

“This is not a kidnapping situation, Viktor Nikiforov.” Professionalism, now. Perhaps that was what he did--negotiate kidnappings. He had the lawyer’s tone down for it. “You came here willingly. You can leave whenever you’d like.”

Silence. Viktor let it stretch.

Finally, he said, “You know my name, but I don’t get to have yours?” Added a soft smile. “How is that fair?”

“What would you do with my name, besides hold it against me?”

“Is it really that important to you?”

“It’s  _ my _ name.”

“And I’m not going to steal it from you.” Viktor yawned. “I’m just trying to be polite.”

“You can be polite without my name.” There was a sound as if he stumbled, somewhere in the dark, and Viktor reached out blindly to catch him. Wrapped a hand around his wrist, and with the way the stranger gasped, Viktor might as well have slapped him hard across the face.

“Please let me go,” he whispered, and Viktor let him go. “You should go back to bed.”

“You too.” The smile had slipped from his face. Viktor was exhausted again. He understood nothing. “And I apologize. For touching you.”

Movement, again, in the dark of the hallway. Viktor sought in vain to make out the features of his face.

“It’s okay,” the stranger said, but his voice was still trapped in a whisper. “It’s okay.”

“Well.” Viktor carded a hand through his own hair awkwardly. “Goodnight.”

“Yuuri,” the stranger whispered. Viktor paused.

“I’m sorry?”

A wavering laugh. The stranger repeated, “My name--my given name. Is Yuuri.”

“Oh.” Viktor felt somehow as if he was trying to smile but could produce nothing but a mild frown. He blinked. “Is it Russian?”

“Japanese.”

“Oh,” he said again. Did he sound nearly as lost as he felt? “Then goodnight, Yuuri.”

“Yeah. You too.”

Viktor closed the bedroom door between them.

:

There were to be rules to this arrangement. Yuuri established them early on.

[Chorus]:  _ Rule one: you will not see my face. _

The most important rule, and logically the most difficult one to adhere to. Immediately upon his establishment of it, Viktor Nikiforov said, “Why?”

He was sitting at the dining table alone. Back straight, light smile curving his mouth. This was amusing to him. His eyes were closed.

“Because it’s my rule,” Yuuri said. He was standing in the kitchen, behind the counter. Standing hurt, made him breathless, and he required Phichit’s supervision to ensure he stayed upright. Yuuri gripped the countertop tightly so he did not collapse. “You already know my reasoning behind it.”

“Right.” The smile was insufferable. Yuuri was not familiar with it--not like he was familiar with his frowns. He supposed this meant that the smile was a public expression, and the frown a private one. “Your job in which you do not hurt people.”

Phichit looked to Yuuri. Yuuri did not turn.

[Chorus]:  _ Rule two: the room down the hall is a guest room. You can have it, but you are not welcome in mine. _

“Noted.” He said nothing else on the term, but his smile slipped. Yuuri rubbed tiredly at his eyes.

[Chorus]:  _ Rule three: please don’t touch me. _

It had burned, when he had touched him that night before. A different kind of burning from the one which was regular now in his chest and hands, and a not altogether unpleasant one. But the lovesickness had reacted positively to it, gathering in the pit of his stomach and his throat in one rush, making him nearly physically sick, and for that Yuuri had found the touch terrifying.

Viktor Nikiforov said, “Understood.” Yuuri nodded. Phichit lingered, did not help him when Yuuri left the room to go back to sleep.

:

[Chorus]:  _ Rule three: please don’t touch me. _

Yuuri was the first to break his own rule. He had a fever again.

It was late evening, and Phichit had not yet come home. Yuuri was making an effort to be more mobile on his own, seeing as since Viktor had come to stay he had become yet-miserable but mostly functional, rather than constantly bedridden. Most times felt like he was trying to prove a point--to himself or to some unknowable god, or perhaps to both--but at least it got him out of bed.

Late October. The throw blanket he had wrapped around his shoulders trailed along the floor, and the tile seeped a chill which crept even through his socks. He was shivering. He announced his presence before he entered the room.

“I’m not watching,” Viktor Nikiforov replied, and yet Yuuri unfurled his wings just enough that he could slip from mortal sight before he ventured further.

It took effort to do so--effort he often could not expend anymore--but Yuuri found the process necessary. He felt as if every aspect of that which had made him  _ Yuuri  _ was atrophying beneath him. He craved warmth, like a cold-blooded thing, and he would receive it through any means possible.

He was feverish when he sat on the sofa beside Viktor Nikiforov, and he was feverish when this simple action elicited no reaction and made Yuuri frown. He was hardly thinking when he laid his head in Viktor Nikiforov’s lap and closed his eyes.

Now a reaction: a soft intake a breath. A new tension in his torso, in his thighs. Yuuri made an involuntarily soft sound in his throat and Viktor Nikiforov said, “Oh.”

_ Is this not okay?  _ Dizzily, Yuuri began to pull away. Viktor Nikiforov whispered, “No, it’s alright.”

“Is it?” The creature with control of his mouth was not Yuuri, but something braver. It was a troublesome thing to be brave.

[Chorus]:  _ This is a dangerous endeavor, Katsuki Yuuri. _

“Yeah,” Viktor Nikiforov said, and he must have forgotten Yuuri’s third rule in his shock because his hand tangled softly in Yuuri’s hair for a moment, and then withdrew. Yuuri nearly pleaded for it back, before he too remembered the terms. His terms, which he had so flagrantly broken himself just now for no particular reason but that he was tired and cold, and Viktor Nikiforov was warm and interesting and to sit in his presence was to at last be rid of the thought of  _ blue  _ which had haunted him for weeks. Yuuri had not realized this until he had touched him, but now that he had he realized he did not want to stop. “It’s fine. More than fine. I don’t mind.”

Yuuri stayed where he was. The chorus echoed itself:  _ Dangerous endeavor indeed. _

:

Viktor shouldn’t have opened the bottle. This was rule number one to having roommates, and of living in a stranger’s house, and of taking advantage of the hospitality of two very strange young men (one of with whom one was perilously obsessed) too. Don’t steal their shit.

But it was in the fridge, and Viktor  _ had  _ been the last to go grocery shopping, and it looked so  _ interesting _ . The label was in an alphabet which he could not read.

Viktor had removed the bottle to study, and a short chain of events which he could not now recall had unraveled itself, and suddenly he had been pouring a glass. Somehow this had seemed natural, and not at all like theft, and anyway Yuuri was upstairs sleeping so did it really count as immoral anyway? He was practically supervised.

At the time, it had seemed like the only proper thing to do. It was evening. Yuuri was in his bedroom. Viktor was bored. Phichit was gone. What was there to do but drink?

He realized now, of course, that this was a mistake. Unfortunate.

He was drunk when he knocked on the door to Yuuri’s bedroom, drunk when he listened to Yuuri call softly, “Just a moment,” and leaned willowly against the wall. Drunk when he scrubbed his hand down his face and realized that it made him see colors not in the hall’s greyscale color scheme flit against the walls.

It had just been one glass. Viktor felt like he was sixteen, the first time he had gotten absolutely pissed at a wedding, so much so that his best friend had needed to help him take off his shoes at the end of the night because Viktor could not dip his head downward without making the room spin.

“It’s me,” he announced helpfully before Yuuri opened the door. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Yuuri sounded wary. Viktor had already closed his eyes. “Are you okay?”

He was sliding. Down the wall. He recognized this but could not stop it. “Hm.”

But Yuuri gripped him firmly by the arm. The contact made Viktor start. “Are you okay?” he repeated. This made Viktor laugh.

He slurred, “Whatever bottle’s in the--the bottle in the kitchen? I think--think Phichit brought it home?”

“Oh my god.” The sudden drop in his tone had Viktor opening his eyes. Yuuri folded his hand just under his brow so Viktor could not see, and his eyelashes brushed his palm. “Did you drink that?”

“Uh--” The inside of his wrist was dangerously close to brushing Viktor’s temple. It made him shiver. “Hyp-hypothetically--if I had--”

“How much?” It was distracting, this physical contact. Viktor frowned.

“Um--just a--one glass?” Deeper frown. “I don’t--is that bad?”

“I don’t know.” This was not comforting. Yuuri said, “Close your eyes again.”

Viktor did so, and Yuuri removed his hand from his face. Then he was tugging him forward, into his room. Viktor stumbled, and then stopped.

“Isn’t this--this is breaking a rule?” he asked, the words slanting into one another with even further abandon now. The world about him spun. “I don’t want to impose--”

“Sit.” Yuuri pushed him down onto the bed. It was unmade. This made it feel altogether too personal. “Open your eyes.”

Obedient. He was at least this.

Yuuri’s voice, haltingly: “You look fine.”

“I--”

“Are you seeing things?”

Loss for words. He could do naught but echo. “Seeing things.”

“I’ve always heard it’s a hallucinogenic for you.”

_ “What--” _

“No? Good.” He sounded satisfied. “You’ll be fine. Just really drunk for a short while. Can you handle that?”

“Do I have a choice?” His head felt heavy. He realized that he was blinking too much, too often, but knew not how to stop. Someone gripped him about the shoulders as he swayed, and Viktor realized it was Yuuri. He could not see him.

“Where--where are you?”

Softly, his voice from before him. Yuuri murmured, “I’m here.”

“Can’t see you.”

“I know.” Something grazed his cheek--fingers, pulled back too quickly in fear of tenderness. “But I’m here.”

“I wish I could see you,” he said, realizing belatedly how it might sound. “I mean--”

“It’s okay if that’s what you mean.” He sounded drowsy. Viktor was reminded suddenly of Yuuri, those few days ago, putting his head in Viktor’s lap. “But you can’t.”

_ Not fair.  _ Viktor didn’t say so. Instead, he mumbled, “I’ve got a picture of you in my head anyway.”

“Yeah?” Smile to his voice. “And what do I look like, in that picture?”

“Not telling.” Viktor frowned. Swayed again. “Gotta have secrets too.”

“I see.”

At this reticence Viktor’s frown deepened. He said petulantly, “Are you sure that...you and Phichit--you’re not--”

“Me and Phichit?” Amusement. “There is nothing there.”

“Oh.” Viktor nodded firmly. “That’s good.”

Yuuri laughed. He said nothing. 

“He’s a really good friend. To you.”

“Yes. He is.”

He turned over these three words in his mind for a long while. After a period of silence, Viktor cleared his throat.

“What are you sick with?”

It took several eternities for Yuuri to respond. The next quiet stretched so long that Viktor wondered if he had missed Yuuri getting up to leave.

“It’s--difficult to explain.”

“Phichit said you can’t go to a doctor.” He was speaking without even the slightest bit of self-restraint. The freedom was nice, even if a small part of him recognized the potential embarrassment in it.

“No,” Yuuri said, and there was the sound of him sitting beside Viktor on the bed. At a distance. “I’m afraid a doctor couldn’t do much for me.”

“Are you dying?”

He was being studied. He knew it, in the way one can sense the weight of another’s gaze from across a crowded room. Viktor blinked.

Yuuri said softly, “Not anymore,” and then he was off the bed. Viktor could not decipher by sound where he went, only that he had gone.

:

_ “I would not be cured, youth,”  _ Phichit read aloud in a grave voice. He was standing on the table. Yuuri watched him with the type of hopelessness one adopted when their best friend was someone like Phichit Chulanont. “Yuuri. Are you going to read the next line?”

“I’m not reading anything,” Yuuri said firmly, leaning heavily against the counter. “You're being ridiculous.”

“Ah,” Phichit said, and it was a taunt. His wings were spread against the backdrop of the tiny kitchenette, and it make him look as if some classical painting of Eros in a museum had collided with a reasonably less grand reality. He was wearing Yuuri’s glasses, as costuming for his performance.  _ “I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me.” _

“Honestly, why do you think this--”

The sound of a key turning in a lock. Phichit folded his wings against his back and adopted an innocent expression. Yuuri slipped from sight.

“Hey, I really hope this isn’t going to cause trouble--” A dog’s bark. Mild Slavic curses. The clatter of keys dropped to the tile.

Phichit, still atop the table, said, “Is that a dog?”

“Yeah.” He sounded only slightly apologetic about it. “My apartment doesn’t allow them over sixty pounds. Are you standing on the table?”

“Why do you have a dog?” Yuuri asked levelly from around the corner, as Phichit answered cheerfully, “Yeah. We’re doing a read-through.”

“A what?”

“The dog,” Yuuri repeated, flashing Phichit a look. “There’s a dog.”

“I--uh--” Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov had not spoken at length since the incident the week before, when Viktor had shown up at Yuuri’s door. “I found her in an alley.”

“That doesn’t explain why she’s here,” replied Phichit, and he jumped down from the table. The dog greeted him with a cheerful bark. “She looks a little soggy.”

Viktor Nikiforov said, “It’s raining.” Yuuri came around the counter and into view of the front door.

“You look a little soggy too,” Phichit added, pulling Yuuri’s glasses off his face and folding them over his collar. “Do you--”

“Phichit,” Yuuri said, and the dog’s gaze swung to him. She was a poodle. She barked again. “Please.”

Phichit Chulanont coughed, then shrugged. Tipped his head in the direction of Yuuri’s voice.

“He likes dogs.”

“Is she going to stay here?” Yuuri asked, to end the silence. Viktor Nikiforov was looking at him. Through him. It made no difference--the pressure to avoid his eyes made Yuuri light-headed.

[Chorus]:  _ Blue. _

“If you want her to.” Viktor looked down. “Otherwise I’ll find someone to give her to. A friend or something.”

“Do you have many of those?” Phichit drawled, and this time Yuuri snapped,  _ “Phichit.” _

“My apologies.” Phichit bowed. Yuuri’s glasses disentangled from his collar and clattered to the floor. “I forget we walk on eggshells here now.”

“You’re being a dick,” Yuuri hissed, and Phichit looked away.

“I don’t mind if the dog stays,” he muttered now, slightly heeled. “But I’m too busy to dogsit.”

“Just for a few days,” Viktor Nikiforov promised, tangling his fingers in the dog’s fur. “I’m going to take her to a vet.”

“Fine by me.” Phichit waved a hand. “I’m going to disappear now. Don’t let her track shit all over the apartment.”

“Understood.”

Phichit knelt to collect Yuuri’s glasses from the floor. They were unbroken when he pressed them into Yuuri’s hands and made the latter look at him.

Very quietly, with a reverence which belied the fact that the words were not his own, Phichit said,  _ “Come, brother, will you go?” _

Yuuri stayed where he was.

:

Contrary to what Viktor Nikiforov may have been inclined to believe, Yuuri had not been drinking when the overwhelming urge to climb over the windowsill overtook him at two in the morning. He was perfectly sober.

Still, it was cold outside, and the open window must have brought in a chill. Wind whipped around street corners and barely began to whistle, like it was wont to do when snow came. Yuuri’s socked heels bounced softly against the outer brick of the building. 

He was currently sitting on the sill, with his wings folded. It was a bad idea to open his wings while the majority of him remained inside the apartment, lest they get caught inside if Yuuri ever fell. Again.

He had not flown in a month and a half. Yuuri used his wings only to hide his face from Viktor Nikiforov now. He could feel the weakness of his muscles like one could only ever feel the lack of something, like a gnawing.

Atrophy, entropy--he thought perhaps both phenomena felt the same.

[Chorus]:  _ Blue. _

:

The chill was what woke him. Not a sound, not a touch. Just the cold.

The poodle--Viktor had elected to call her Makkachin, bowing to a bit of creative contribution on Yuuri’s part--stayed sleeping at the foot of the bed when he left the room. He shut the door quietly behind him when he did.

At the kitchen window, a shadow shifted. Viktor Nikiforov said, “Why are you not in bed?”

To its credit, the shadow did not appear startled. It murmured with Yuuri’s voice, “Can’t sleep with the wind.”

“What are you doing at the window?” Viktor asked. Frowned.

Yuuri said, “Sitting.” Viktor realized that he was sitting--on the sill. His frown deepened.

“You should come away from there.” He stepped forward. Yuuri’s shadow stiffened at the sound.

“I’m alright.”

“Maybe so, but we’re three stories up and I just want to be safe--”

“Are you interested in my safety?” A soft laugh. “There is little risk of me falling to my death out of a window, Viktor Nikiforov.”

“Have you been drinking?”

There was a slight twist to his voice which hinted at a more than slight twist to his mouth. “No.”

“Still.” Viktor stayed where he was. He reached out softly with his right hand. “Can you come away from the window?”

Heavy pause, as if Yuuri was weighing the consequences of the next course of action. Viktor saw him shiver in the dark.

“Okay,” Yuuri said, and did as asked. Viktor realized the tension in his shoulders only after he released it.

“Thank you,” he whispered. Laughed nervously, and carded a hand through his hair. “You had me worried.”

A tilt in the dark to his shadow. Yuuri murmured, “You don’t need to worry about me and windows.”

Still. Viktor smiled half-heartedly and wondered if he could see it. The light from the street surely must have illuminated his face, even if it appeared hellbent on obscuring Yuuri. Per usual.

Without knowing why he did it, Viktor said, “It’s quieter in my room, as long as you don’t mind the dog.”

“Is it?” His tone was gentle. Viktor wondered if the question was Yuuri’s way of giving Viktor a chance to take the offer back. He considered doing so. Yuuri’s silhouette was vaguely discernible in the shadows. He was shorter than Viktor, though not by too much.

“Yeah,” Viktor said, professionally. “And warmer too.”

Briefly, Yuuri seemed to consider it. There was a sad kind of smile to his voice when he said, “I’m sorry.”

“No, no.” Viktor was tripping over his own feet now to seem nonchalant. He felt himself blushing and hoped it did not show. “No worries. It was just a thought.”

“I appreciate it,” Yuuri murmured. “Really.”

The heat spreading up his neck made Viktor Nikiforov itch. He said, “If you don’t mind then, I’m going to--”

Hands laid flat against his jaw. Yuuri’s silhouette was suddenly gone. But  _ he  _ was still here. Viktor could hear him breathe.

Rabbit’s heart in his chest, rabbit’s pulse in his throat. Burst of brief, wonderful pain in his chest. It felt like  _ finally. _

Viktor Nikiforov said nothing. Yuuri, too, also said nothing.

And so several eternities drew on like this. Viktor was afraid to breathe with Yuuri’s hands on his face, lest Viktor wake him from whatever reverie this was and cause him to pull away. His palms were more calloused than Viktor had imagined they would be.

At last, Yuuri took back his hands. Softly, he whispered, “Have a good rest of your night, Viktor.”

“Yeah.”  _ Stupid, stupid, stupid,  _ why had he not  _ done _ something? He had certainly had the time. And Yuuri, in retrospect, had so obviously been waiting for it. “You--you too.”

As if he could possibly ever have gotten back to sleep after that.

:

[Chorus]:  _ Blue. _

:

Viktor Nikiforov did not sleep quite so well in the Chulanont-Katsuki apartment anymore, following the nighttime incident at the window. More often than not, he considered it an accomplishment if he slept at all. 

When he did, he dreamed of feathers.

:

“He called me back.”

Yuuri hummed softly, mostly to mask the way his fingers had gone still. He did not look up.

_ He  _ was Celestino, the man to whom Phichit had been leaving increasingly irritable voicemails over the past month. He lived in Rome. He was an expert.

Yuuri said, “Yes?”

Phichit paused. Yuuri refrained from thinking the word  _ hesitation  _ because of the connotation of such a thing. Doctors hesitated before an unfortunate diagnosis. Hesitated before breaking bad news.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Phichit said quietly. Bad news. “Short of an iron arrow.”

A catch in his throat. Yuuri said, “I won’t do that.”

Phichit was angry now. Or maybe scared. His tongue was sharp. “I wouldn’t let you anyway. I wasn’t  _ suggesting--” _

“So what?” Yuuri had also grown short. He felt dizzy. “Where do we go from here?”

“It’s your decision,” Phichit whispered. “But I’d tell him."

“I won’t do that either.”

“Well, the way it stands now, you lose your job either way so maybe for once we should be  _ practical--” _

“Phichit.” His cheeks were damp. “I don’t want--”

“I know you don’t want--”

“I can’t put something like that on him. I don’t even know him.”

A sigh. A quiet, helpless laugh. “You have to tell him,” Phichit said finally. “Or you have to make him leave. Those are your options.”

Yuuri nodded. He waited until Phichit had given up on further conversation and left the room before he allowed himself to cry.

:

[Chorus]: _Blue._ _Blueblueblueblueblue--_

:

“I can’t stay here anymore,” Viktor said eventually, and he was glad for once that he could not see Yuuri’s face as he did so. He did not want to know if the statement hurt him, or if it succeeded in having an effect on him at all. “I’m sorry.”

It was the sixth week. It was evening. Makkachin had her head laid sleepily in Viktor’s lap.

“Don’t be sorry.” Still, Yuuri’s voice wavered. “I--I figured.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t help but repeat it. “I just--”

“It’s okay.” Something trembled against Viktor’s throat. Viktor realized it was his own hand. “I’m--I know.”

“Can I ask you something?” He had nothing left to lose anymore. He suspected Yuuri knew it, and this was why he consented.

“Of course,” Katsuki Yuuri said, and the simplicity of it all nearly made Viktor cry.

He began haltingly, “Phichit told me--on my first day here? He said I had something with my name on it. Of his.”

A drop in temperature in the room. Yuuri said from the window, “Phichit said that?”

“Is it bad?”

A sound like a shake of a head. “It wasn’t his to tell.”

“What does it mean?”

The curtains closed with a sudden noise which made Viktor jump. The yellow street light seeping into the shadowy room dimmed.

“It means you should go home, Viktor,” Yuuri said softly. Gently. “And that things will be better from now on.”

He didn’t understand. “Why do they need to be better?” he asked. Yuuri laughed.

“Phichit and I are in the ancient ill-advised business of trying to understand what makes human beings happy,” he said. “Three thousand years, and we still haven’t quite grasped it, in my opinion. You’re all so complicated.”

Viktor shook his head. “Are you saying I’m not happy?”

“It’s not me saying that.”

A frown, which slid quickly into a scowl. “That’s presumptuous of you.”

“It’s not.” Yuuri appeared to be watching him tangle his fingers compulsively in Makkachin’s fur. He said nothing more.

When he could take the quiet no longer, Viktor whispered, “But  _ how  _ will they be better?”

“I don’t know.” Yuuri paused, must have thought about it. “What makes you happy, Viktor?”

“I--don’t know.” Viktor laughed, a bit distractedly. “I--”

He stopped. He said, “I won’t see you again?”

Something told him Yuuri shook his head. Perhaps it was the silence.

:

The night before Viktor left, Yuuri found himself in the room in which he had stayed. He was packed. His presence in their lives seemed pitifully smaller now, with the majority of it in cardboard boxes.

Yuuri leaned against the doorframe. Invisible. He said, “Hey.”

“Shit!” Viktor had been facing the open doorway: sitting on the made bed, staring into space. Staring through Yuuri. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Just got here.” Yuuri knocked on the wooden molding beside his face. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” He looked smaller too when he propped his chin in his hand. “Phichit must be glad to get his room back.” 

It was not a guest room, of course. Yuuri and Phichit could not afford an apartment with a guest room. Viktor must have inferred such, and just kept his mouth shut on the subject.

Polite of him.

“I wouldn’t know.” Yuuri shrugged. “He appears to be taking a vow of silence.”

“What?” Viktor looked up.  _ Blue.  _ “Why?”

[Chorus]:  _ Because he knows this is a mistake. _

Yuuri said, “He’s just angry with me.”

“But why?”

Yuuri shrugged, then remembered Viktor could not see him. He said, “Wanna get drunk?”

:

The second time Viktor got drunk on ambrosia, he rather enjoyed the experience. Even if it did make him see things.

They were sitting on the bed, and it was no longer made. Somehow, it had come to pass that Yuuri was touching his face. 

Yuuri, too, was a bit drunk. He kept drifting off in the middle of sentences, his hands going still on Viktor’s cheeks for long stretches of silence at a time, and the absent gentleness which came with the god-wine became him. Endlessly.

“Your eyes are very blue,” Yuuri said quietly, stumbling over the words too much for sobriety. “S’pretty.”

Viktor laughed. He blinked, and every part of him was both dream-heavy and buzzing. He wanted very much to do something stupid. He wanted this stupid thing to involve Yuuri.

With enormous effort, Viktor said, “You should kiss me.”

Yuuri’s hands, which were moving softly in his hair now, stopped. His blood rushed fiercely enough in his arteries that Viktor could feel the drum of it in Yuuri’s wrists. He said, “Oh, Viktor.”

“I’m serious.” He wasn’t sure of anything else in the world at the moment, but he was sure of this. He wanted to kiss him. The force of this desire outweighed his ability to drunkenly string together complete sentences. “You... _ asked _ me--” the word was very difficult to say in English at the moment, and he had to repeat himself a few times--“ _ asked  _ what made me happy, didn’t you?”

“Several days ago, yes.” Yuuri’s voice was quiet. Perhaps a bit more sober now. “But I don’t think…”

“S’a good idea,” Viktor said resolutely. “S’a very good idea.”

Yuuri’s hands were trembling. His voice was a whisper. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because--” He sounded as if he was going to say something very important. Viktor waited for several seconds of bated silence, but Yuuri only said softly, “Because you are drunk.”

“Oh.” Viktor thought he should perhaps be more upset by this rejection. He was not. Perhaps because he was drunk. “That’s fine then.”

Abruptly, Yuuri laughed. Viktor looked down at his own hands, and he laughed too.

:

Four hours later, it was three in the morning. Viktor woke still slightly drunk. Yuuri was asleep in his bed, and somehow this barely even gave Viktor pause.

What did give him pause: Viktor could see him. Viktor  _ saw  _ him.

He was sleeping without a pillow, without the comforter pulled about him. It appeared as if he had fallen asleep trying to occupy the least amount of room possible, and that such efforts had carried over into sleep. He was still dressed (about himself, Viktor could not say the same--he shed clothing while intoxicated, and it appeared that no one had succeeded in any efforts to stop him) in everything but a shirt.

This final detail was relevant not simply because Yuuri was beautiful (because he  _ was, _ he very much was) but also because he had  _ wings. _

Gorgeously impossible, terribly inhuman raven’s wings connected to his back from his shoulder blades, not folded against him now but open and hanging slightly crooked, ruffled as if he had neglected to preen them before bed. Yuuri slept on his right side, and the wings hung over the far edge of the bed.

Viktor Nikiforov was seeing things. He dragged a hand down his face.

In sleep, Katsuki Yuuri was soft. His hair was as dark as his wings, messy now and falling just a bit past his brow. His face was smooth. He was prettier than the image Viktor had devised of him in his head, though for what reason Viktor could not decide. Because he was real, maybe. Because he was here.

(Or as real and as here as the product of an ambrosia-induced hallucination could be, rather.) Either way.

Without considering the consequences of the action, Viktor Nikiforov reached out and traced a gently trembling line down the shallow slope of Yuuri’s nose. Then he touched his mouth.

Yuuri did not wake. Pushing his luck as only he knew how to do, Viktor reached quietly over his shoulder and touched one of the wings.

Substance to them. Feel, and weight, and a peculiar liveliness that hummed up Viktor’s wrist and which was not unpleasant. Did that make them real? Viktor didn’t know. He felt that he should know.

Beneath his touch, Yuuri moved. Viktor withdrew his hand too quickly, panicky in his haste, and struck Yuuri lightly on the shoulder.

Yuuri woke.

:

It was an awful thing to be unmasked. Somehow it was even more awful when there was no malicious intention behind it.

Viktor had apologized. Viktor had wept, had begged, had promised not to tell anyone. 

Had asked to touch them again. 

Had asked if Yuuri could use them.

In his head, the chorus:  _ Damned damned damned--so it  _ was _ hubris after all. Will you lose your wings for a mortal, Katsuki Yuuri?  _ The singing did not stop. Did not quiet. Yuuri was hungover, and it was all a bit too much.

In this way, it was not his fault that he fled. The world had become quite too overwhelming, and Yuuri needed to leave. So he did.

He had not used his wings in months. He used them now.

[Chorus]:  _ No. You would not sacrifice this for a man. _

[Chorus]:  _ Would you, Yuuri? _

:

In order to keep the dog, Viktor lied about her weight. He had suspicions that the woman at the desk knew the poodle did not weigh fifty-five pounds, and that she had overlooked this fact for his benefit. He did kind of look like a mess, lately. Perhaps it made him pitiable.

Home. It felt strange. The rooms were too bare, and the halls echoed. Greenwich Village had never been home.

_ You can’t come back once you leave.  _

Phichit had said it. He had blocked Viktor’s path of exit from the apartment, standing imperiously before the door. Viktor rescinded his earlier statement about the short man not being imposing.

Viktor had not acknowledged this statement. Instead, he had whispered,  _ Do you have them too? _

Phichit had dipped his head. His were copper. Eagle’s wings.

_ Why did no one tell me? _

_ No offense, but is it really something you needed to know? _

_ I saw his face. _

Long pause. Phichit’s expression was mild.

_ Is that a threat, Viktor Nikiforov? _

:

[Chorus]:  _ Blue. _

:

Yuuri was on the fire escape again. He was working.

[Chorus]:  _ It is a very human thing, this error of yours. _

For once, Yuuri disagreed. This problem of his was actually quite divine. The gods were always fucking up in this manner, and they tended to make much bigger messes than Yuuri had.

(Was that blasphemous? For once, Yuuri found he really didn’t care.)

Viktor Nikiforov was not home. Yuuri knew this, and he knew it was for the best. He could not bring himself to imagine what he would have to do once he did find Viktor home, eventually. 

The gods were not forgiving beings. They intended to make Yuuri crawl.

:

[Chorus]:  _ Blue. _

:

It happened that he saw him, once. Twice, even. Maybe three times, though Viktor was not sure if he could count the third sighting as fact because he had been slightly--more than slightly--to the left of sober at the time.

Plus, he saw him in everything. He could not trust his eyes, usually. Mostly.

So the first and second times, he did not try to speak to him. The third time, he did. This was not his fault. (Mostly.)

It was just that he was warm and stumbling and his scarf was choking him, his collar was choking him, and in a fast approaching moment he might have had to bend over and throw up in the street, and beside him he heard a soft, human sound. Viktor turned, and he was already saying, “M’sorry, m’sorry, I don’t--”

The soft, human sound came again. As something greater now. It said, “Let’s get you home.”

“Oh,” Viktor said, and not much else. He did not remember what came after. He woke in bed the next morning, with a bottle of painkillers tucked unassumingly beside his pillow. (There was evidence of him having vomited in the kitchen sink, though Viktor did not discover this until later. He did not remember the voice nor have the mental capacity to theorize about its owner until much later.)

Time passed.

He became tired. Tired most of the time, then tired always. He spent much time at the Greenwich apartment with his chin propped on his hands, watching the snow gather on the windowsills. He thought he might have lost his job around this time--as if it mattered. He had money enough. He fed Makkachin everyday, and usually remembered to feed himself with similar regularity. Things became mostly as they had always been before Katsuki Yuuri.

Except:

Viktor thought frequently of winter plumage. Flight feathers. 

:

He fell asleep at the open window. This is how Yuuri found him.

“Viktor.” He was going to freeze. Yuuri had perhaps a more hardy corporeal form than the likes of Viktor Nikiforov, and yet even he had began to go numb at his fingertips. He hooked his fingers beneath the sash and threw the window open wider. “Viktor. It’s snowing.”

In the hallway, a scrabbling of nails. Makkachin had recognized the sound of Yuuri’s voice. Still, Viktor did not stir. There was snow in his hair. Yuuri sighed.

_ Don’t be ridiculous,  _ said the chorus, just as Yuuri behaved with characteristic ridiculousness and slipped through the window into Viktor Nikiforov’s apartment--the second uninvited entry in two months. (This, at least, was the first time he had come through the window.)

“Viktor,” Yuuri whispered. He opened his wings again briefly, to shake the snow from them. Then he placed a light hand on Viktor Nikiforov's shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Mm.” Stirring. A soft sigh. But still no consciousness, nor cooperation. Yuuri shook Viktor Nikiforov’s shoulder with a slight increase in urgency.

“Viktor, you’re full of snow.” With his free hand, Yuuri brushed the white from his hair. The majority of it had already melted and begun to drip cold water from the ends onto his face. “Come on. Don’t make me carry you.”

He prodded his shoulder again, and Viktor Nikiforov murmured, “Oh.” Clumsily, he lifted his head. Rubbed at his face, where his knuckles had left red imprints on his cheeks. Then he looked at Yuuri and blinked.

Yuuri, for his part, became suddenly aware of all the rules he was currently breaking, and he swallowed.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “You fell asleep at the window.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor mumbled. Blinking again. “You’re here.”

“Not really.” Yuuri wrapped his fingers around Viktor’s wrist and used it to pull him to his feet. Contact between them again made something warm and pleasant uncurl in his stomach; Yuuri ignored it. “You’re dreaming.”

“Oh.” Viktor shook his head. He swayed on his feet, and so Yuuri slung his arm around his shoulders with a resigned sigh. “Makes sense.”

“You really should have screens on your windows,” Yuuri added. “Just--a bit of unrelated advice.”

“Mm.”

“And your apartment is freezing.”

“S’fine.” Viktor dropped his head, laying it sleepily in the hollow above Yuuri’s collarbone. Yuuri bit down on his tongue. “Like the cold.”

“Makka doesn’t,” Yuuri replied, though he had no idea about the temperature preferences of the poodle. He was, however, moderately concerned about the chill of Viktor’s skin. “Keep your windows closed.”

“Open ‘em for you.”

“Excuse me?” Now Yuuri was the one who blinked. A shiver stole across his shoulders. He was much too tired for this. Viktor was growing heavier by the moment.

“Mm.” The hum was a satisfied one. Yuuri felt the movement of a gentle smile against his shoulder. “Keep ‘em open. For you.”

Oh. 

That made sense.

“Well, you shouldn’t.” Yuuri felt hollow. He cleared his throat. “That’s--that’s not going to happen, Viktor.”

“Why not?” Viktor mumbled. “You’re here now.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Right.” Yuuri stopped in front of Viktor’s bedroom door and fumbled with the handle. Viktor laughed drowsily. “S’a dream.”

[Chorus]:  _ Hubris, Katsuki Yuuri. _

“Yeah,” Yuuri said quietly. “So don’t leave your windows open, okay?”

“Mm. Okay.” Yuuri removed Viktor’s arm from around his shoulders and set him on the bed. The human warmth leached from Yuuri’s bones much too quickly.

But Viktor Nikiforov was looking at him. He was smiling a bare, tired smile.

Quietly, he said, “I’m sorry about seeing you.”

It was such a strange thing to say. But Yuuri’s heart was in his mouth.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “It’s--it’s okay.”

“I like your wings.”

“Thank you.” Yuuri stepped back, making to leave. Viktor tilted his head.

“Can you come here?”

[Chorus]:  _ No. _

Yuuri thought,  _ Yes. _

“I--”

He hesitated. Long enough to watch Viktor Nikiforov stand from the bed and close the minute space between them, long enough to protest if he wanted to. Yuuri didn’t.

Viktor Nikiforov put his mouth on Yuuri’s.

Despite the complete absence of hidden intent, Yuuri made a soft sound of surprise. In his blood, the dormant lovesickness sang.

The chorus--or perhaps just Yuuri--said,  _ Finally.  _

And Katsuki Yuuri’s eyes were wide, wide, wide. He did nothing for one small eternity, and then his lips parted. Viktor Nikiforov had his fingers bunched in Yuuri’s hair, but Yuuri did not know where to put his own hands. Yuuri was on the fire escape again, and he was falling, and he was never going to hit the pavement and he was never going to fly he was just going to tumble through darkness and fall fall fall--

Something in him snapped. A rubber band. Yuuri stepped back. 

Viktor Nikiforov’s mouth was no longer on his. He found that he missed it.

There was a bit of startled surprise left on Viktor’s face when Yuuri finally met his eyes. When he saw Yuuri looking, he wiped his mouth with the side of his hand and laughed. Quietly. Embarrassed.

“In the dreams, you know, you always kiss me back.”

Silence. Yuuri had a rabbit’s pulse.

“Yuuri.”

Yuuri hit the pavement. His wings did not break. But there was the taste of blood in his mouth. 

“Yuuri. I am really sorry.”

“I--” 

Yuuri didn’t know. What to say, what to think, what to do. His fingers trembled. He had broken so many rules tonight. Did he care?

_ You have to tell him. Or you have to make him leave. Those are your options. _

“Viktor,” Yuuri said softly. He was so afraid. “What is it that you think I am?”

Viktor Nikiforov looked. Finally, professionally, he said, “Not an angel, I presume.”

Yuuri’s laugh was hushed. “Far from an angel,” he whispered.

Viktor hummed. He said, “Does it matter?” and this made even Yuuri wonder. Did it matter?

“Viktor,” Yuuri said again. “Are you--are you happy?”

“Right now?” Viktor Nikiforov smiled. It was only a small curve to his mouth, but it was not sad. This was a grand enough change for Yuuri. “Right now, I am unbelievably happy.”

Oh.

So this time it was Yuuri who closed the distance between them. Yuuri who touched Viktor first. Yuuri who kissed back.

It was nice. 

It was happy.

(“I’ll close the windows at night,” Viktor had promised against loosely threaded fingers, against calloused palms. “But I’m going to keep them unlocked.”)

:

If one stood in the alley and watched the snowy windowsill of a particular Greenwich apartment on a particular December evening, one might have caught by eye a rather curious scene. Someone extended a hand from within the apartment and dropped a deep black feather over the sill with careful fingers. The feather moved softly--barely--as if caught in slowed time. 

Katsuki Yuuri looked down. There was no one watching.

:

_ you begin to understand what a logos is and what it is not and the difference between them. eros is the difference. like a face crossing a mirror at the back of the room, eros moves. you reach. eros is gone. _

**Author's Note:**

> hmm. i have many valid excuses for my absence, but i'll spare you them. still, i apologize for my neglect of my ongoing fic--it hasn't been abandoned, i just haven't had the chance to think about it in about a month. im workin on it.
> 
> the lines quoted by phichit are shakespeare, from the comedy As You Like It. the epigrams are from anne carson's essay Eros the Bittersweet, and i couldn't say which writing the socrates is from bc i make an effort not to read socrates in my free time. thus that line is taken on faith from anne carson's writings.
> 
> i can be found on tumblr at fortinbra.tumblr.com. all kudos and comments are deeply appreciated. :)
> 
> xx


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